Her tagline is "you know the ones..." I gotta say, I can totally relate. That should maybe be another blog post in and of itself. Anyway, I appreciate her insight into life - it's practical stuff for every day... from a Christian perspective. God is real and he cares about the little things. And I like reading blogs that assume that to be true.
ANYWAY, she does something called "works for me wednesday," aka: WFMW.
And people 'link up' on her blog to their blogs with posts about what... works for them. (Shocking!)
Here is the original post with all the rules and guidelines (and the code for inserting the button below into your blog if you want to join).
Here is her most recent WFMW post.
And here's one thing that works for me that I wanted to share with you today.
Night Time Clean Up
There is probably not much explanation needed here, but at the end of the day, no matter how clean my house was at one point, it seems like there are things. Clutter.
Ugh. I hate clutter.
Clutter is inevitable. If you love clutter, or it doesn't bother you, I don't judge you for it. But it's hard for me to relax in clutter.
So, we've developed this habit... half of it was on purpose, and half kinda just happened.
Here's the deal. I used to do a 5-minute clean up. I'd just walk around while Ben put Addie to bed and put stuff where it goes - toys, books, clorox wipes, dirty towels from the kitchen, mail, etc... That is the part that kinda just happened. Ben was putting her to bed and I couldn't relax until I could see the floor, so I picked up stuff for a few minutes.
Well, Addie got old enough to learn how to pick up after herself. Our 800 square feet apartment doesn't include a playroom with a door to close, which is totally fine, then our living room often looks like this.
Since I can't go to bed with the house looking like that [OCD] & we didn't want her to think she just gets to take every toy out of every bin and throw them all over the house and the magic clean up elves pick it up every night, we started having her help. I don't really remember when or why or how it occurred to us that we should teach her to clean up. Maybe around when she was 11 or 12 months? Ben really is the one who taught her. She didn't get it at first, but we just started for the habit. Before bath time, he and Addie would go in her room and pick up the toys and clothes one at a time. It used to make me giggle, just standing outside the door and watching him help her learn to clean up the mess.
"Adelyn, put the blocks in the bucket."
"Good, now put this block in the bucket."
"Put all the blocks in the bucket."
And then on to the clothes.
"Adelyn, put the clothes in the drawer."
At first, there were lots of reminders and she maybe did 10% and we did 90%.
And there were some time-outs for not obeying. [Once she clearly understood what we were telling her - "put that book on the shelf" but looked up, smiled, and read it instead... as if to say "do you mean it?" then it becomes disobedience. More on that another time... maybe.]
But, it didn't take that long for her to 'get it.' Not that she cleans perfectly or always obeys when I say "put this away." But, she has learned what it means to "clean up the _______." And we all clean up for about 5 minutes at night. It's just part of the routine now. Honestly, I'm so glad we stumbled on this idea. I was so surprised that she could learn to pick up the toys so young, but hey, it works for us.
So, are you going to link up and join? What works for you?? If you want to (and I hope you do), click HERE for the original post and to grab a button like the one below & write your own WFMW post.
